(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a stereoscopic image display device, and more particularly, to a stereoscopic image display device for generating stereoscopic image data and displaying a stereoscopi image based on three-dimensional (3D) graphics data.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In general, people perceive a stereoscopic effect physiologically and experientially. In three-dimensional image display technology, a stereoscopic effect of an object is produced by using binocular parallax, which is a primary factor in recognizing a stereoscopic effect at a short distance. Stereoscopic images are viewed by a stereoscopic method involving wearing of spectacles or by an autostereoscopic method not involving wearing of spectacles.
The stereoscopic method is classified into an anaglyph method involving wearing of spectacles having blue and red lenses on respective sides, a polarization method involving wearing of polarizing spectacles having different polarization directions, and a time-division method involving wearing of spectacles including an electronic shutter that is synchronized with time-divided frames. However, the stereoscopic method requires the inconvenience of wearing the spectacles and causes difficulty in viewing objects other than the stereoscopic image. Accordingly, the autostereoscopic method that does not involve the wearing of spectacles has been actively developed.
Typical autostereoscopic methods include a lenticular method in which a lenticular lens plate having an array of vertically arranged cylindrical lenses is formed in front of an image panel, and a parallax barrier method that separates left eye and right eye images using a barrier to obtain a stereoscopic effect.
When using stereoscopic image display devices that are capable of selectively displaying a two-dimensional (2D) image or a stereoscopic image, 2D image data and stereoscopic image data are typically provided from an external device to the stereoscopic image display device. Therefore, there has been a problem in that the 2D image data and the stereoscopic image data have to be separately generated. For example, the stereoscopic image data is provided to a stereoscopic image display device after converting 3D graphics data for a 2D image (i.e., the 3D graphics data including 3D space coordinate and texture information of an object to be stereoscopically displayed on a flat screen) into the stereoscopic image data. Further, there has been a problem in that additional storage units are required for respectively storing the input 2D image data or stereoscopic image data in the stereoscopic image display device. Accordingly, it has been difficult to commercialize the stereoscopic image display device due to the above problems.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.